


From the Bones, Into the Water

by acatone



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, I know, This is a really weird fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 20:11:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7283068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acatone/pseuds/acatone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gerbera, who researches under the Academy finds peace within the sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From the Bones, Into the Water

**Author's Note:**

> Shower thoughts fleshed out into a story.

Looking back, Gerbera remembers the time when she used to watch the great whales hauled from the whaling ships with great amusement. She could not fathom how she could have watch the whales, lonely and pained, with such enthusiasm. She’d watch them bleed for the stomach, and her hands would travel to the waterfall of red.

 She remembered living off the whales, her family scraping for food, stealing bits and pieces of their meat from whaling factories. It was a matter of survival, but not anymore, no. She now lived a relatively comfortable life on her own. She has proper food on her plate and enough money for a new shoe every year. She should be grateful, she knows. But being born of the wrong gender has put new curses upon her as she researched under the Academy. She was only accepted under the name of Gerry, not Gerbera. She was the only woman in the marine biology department, and needless to say, they gave her hell for it. Her ranks might be higher than them, and her study result is more fruitful than the rest, always. But perhaps it is the nature of man, there was always a hint of doubt in their voice as they ask her about her results. There is always the joking (and not quite joking) question of whether or not she has slept with more prominent scientists. There is always a cloud of doubt on her, and her only escape was the sea all the clouds could do was cast a shadow above the deep blue ocean. It was nothing more.

When things get too troublesome, she will turn to her work. She will run a boat to the middle of the ravaging ocean with a notebook and a pen and her diving gear. It should have been dangerous, people have died in the great oceans across the isles, but perhaps it was the outsider’s will, but she never sank, and never will. The wild waves of the sea never, not once, touched her skin without her wanting it. They never hurt her, no. Even as people sank and boats fall into bottom of the sea, never did they as much as lay a hand on her, except when she herself dips her skin into the dark waters. 

The ocean is gentle with her, their current seems to caress her as she swim in the dark waters of the ocean and held her, full of love. It is unlike men, who treat her no more than an animal, and perhaps, she wasn’t. Because what kind of selfish creature would think themselves higher than others? They were living and breathing just the same. Instead, she found a family within the ocean. She follows a pod of whales, who treated her like one of them. They circle round, and round her boat with no intention of ever hurting her and when she dips herself into the black waters of the Pandyssian ocean, she found them gentle and loving. More so than men ever were to each other. They caressed her with their large, protecting fins and it reminded her so much of her mother, who used to caress her just the same, and sing her lullabies to sleep. The whales sing too, a familiar melody that resonates with something within her chest. Their bellowings so deep and beautiful, they seem to come out from their bones.They were gentle, loving creatures, unlike the harsh nature of society, which only aimed to harm her, they protected her and asked for nothing in return. She loved them, from the bottom from her heart, in the same way that the sun loves the moon, but never can be. For she had taken part in harming them, in taking their children, as the cry for their mothers. She had eaten them, ravaged them like the ocean to the boats above it, but they did not care, and neither did she.

There is an ache in her heart every time her feet find its place in the sandy beach. She can hear them sing for her from afar, and she only hopes that the whalers would not come for them. She is a danger to them, she only wishes she wasn’t for she loved them truly, more than any of the lovers she ever had.

There is a greater ache when she finds the Academy members celebrating over gaining a live whale for sampling few days later. It was one she recognized, the smallest of the pod. A poor child, once again crying for her mother as its body try so helplessly to struggle against the ropes that held him. They kept him alive of course, barely. For a dead whale is not a whale to study on but they would never let it go. Not alive anyway. It is an act of mercy when one night, she went in there and took the little whale’s life. She whispered to him the lullaby her mother used to sing for her when she couldn’t sleep, and then she put him into an eternal sleep. They discarded the dead whale the next day.

They knew it was her. They shunned her and mocked her and refused to publish any of her works. They burned her books and threw her out into the streets in a fit of rage. She was no longer the esteemed biologist she had wanted to be, and it killed her. She lived in the streets once more but she refused to touch whale meat that came aplenty. She would not touch them, no. For the whale it came from was just like a little brother to her. She would not betray him. Instead, she finds herself atop of the Kaldwin Bridge, ready to throw herself off the metal hinge and into the gentle caress of the ocean that she knows of. She jumps and finds herself not within the dark waters, but in a place which was littered with pieces of the world. There a boy whose body smelled of salt and the sea appeared before her. He was sm

“Is this the afterlife?” she asked.

“No, not quite,” he said, voice gentle and almost loving. He was just like the sea, and that is how she knew who he was. He was the sea itself, who guarded her and caressed her as she swum with the leviathans. He was one who sank boats but kept her afloat. He was the one who held her in his arms, who loved her when no mere man would. He was the sea and he was the ocean. He was the Outsider.

She did not ask for her life, no. But he granted it anyway. He gave the gift of a voice, one of the few things that she lost from living her life as a woman. And he gifted her with a body she could only dream of, its gentle outlines, but with teeth strong enough to destroy ones who harm her. He gifted her with things she can only imagine, with new lungs, so that she can sing, even as the dark waters filled it and fins that would take her across the Isles, singing for him. And as always, the ocean asks for nothing in return.

She finds herself looking up at the Bridge, her body light and her lungs filled with water. But it was alright, for with this, she can finally be with the ocean and the family that loved her. Gerbera spread her fins and swum away into the deepest depth of the ocean, singing of the great ocean with a voice that vibrates from her bones, and into the water.


End file.
